Horoscopes for People Who Need Naps

NB: I am not an astrologer, tarot card reader, bone thrower, tea-leaf enthusiast, or seer. I have one psychic grandmother, though, so there is spooky blood in my veins. Take with however many grains of salt you usually cook with.

ARIES: I learned recently that Ethelred the Unready ruled England for thirty-seven years, even retaking the throne after a brief exile under Swedish invader Sweyn Forkbeard. This is an exceedingly long time to rule; most of his contemporaries lasted a few years before being deposed. (By the way, apparently “the Unready” is a mistranslation, and it should be “the Poorly-Counseled,” which has nearly the same ring to it, imho). It’s kind of amazing that a boy-king who took the throne at the age of twelve would last so long, but you never really know how something is going to turn out when you start it. Use Ethelred’s unexpected success and longevity as your inspiration (and cast aside the unfortunate descriptor) when you think about your parenting career.

TAURUS: Are you a person who makes to-do lists? I swear by them. But since having a baby, my to-do list powers have been in short supply. I forget what I’m doing all the time. And I forget where I put my lists, too, or if I even made a list. I’ve had to get better at leaving stuff undone, and with forgetting stuff that had to get done. I read a headline that basically said, “parents are great at multi-tasking and getting their shit together, but not for the first three years,” and because I’m still in that bubble, I don’t know where I read it or how to find it. Maybe you’ll have better luck; maybe not. In either case, I bet you have some life-long tricks and tips for making sure your life isn’t always on fire. Now might be a great time to explore them fully.

GEMINI: I often seek two things in my parenting practice: a desire to be down in the mud, present with the weird, funny, boring stuff my baby does (today it was banging two metal measuring cups together, which sustained him for 40 minutes); and a desire to sprout wings and pour beams of light from the top of my head. In other words, to go into full Mystical Mama Mode. These things are not compatible; they take up different parts of the brain, and running both at once is like trying to jam two hands into the same mitten. Your homework is discover the seams that join these ways of being: the transcendence in the mundane, and the mundanity of the ethereal.

CANCER: If you wrote a book about parenting, it would be called Because I Said So and it would outline a very reasonable-sounding approach to authoritarianism in the family home. Rules, dicta, schedules, and an unshakeable belief that your way is best underscore how you see your role as a parent. You lead and they follow, right? Cancer, I say this with love and sympathy, but: you need to chill the fuck out. Pivot. Leave the broccoli on the plate. Leave the socks on the floor. Learn to be late, accept mistakes, hear the word “no.” More than that: embrace it. Encourage it. Make room for that to grow.

LEO: Remember back in undergrad when you spent a season hanging out with the weird theatre kids—the storytellers, the nascent drag queens, the wannabe Savion Glovers who would start singing songs from Rent unprovoked? Remember how exciting that felt, and how much you learned about the human experience, and also how exhausted you were at the end of every day? The need to be eyes, to see, to be performed for and to validate? Think of that time as boot camp for parenthood. Pace yourself as the glitter flies. Carve out time to rest your eyes.

VIRGO: It’s the 150th anniversary of Canada’s confederation this year, and I’m of two minds about it. With the publication of the Truth and Reconciliation Report in 2015, it became impossible to not to notice that Canada’s relationship with indigenous people has been negligent at best, and veers all the way to genocidal. Canada prides itself on being Better Than That, but the reality, we’re not. We haven’t been. Andwestillstruggle. Wounds have to be clean to heal; otherwise they leave scar tissue and pain. Hurt people hurt people, as the saying goes: it’s time we all examined our scars a little more closely. What old wounds do you have, Virgo? And what present-day pain are they causing?

LIBRA: I’ve only been to Iceland once, but gee, it left an impression on me. It’s hard to say what exactly made it so amazing. Maybe it was the fact that it was the first international vacation of my adult life. Maybe it was the endless sun, the long days that settled only into twilight before rousing the sunrise again. Maybe it was the sense of camaraderie among the Icelanders—the island holds a mere three million, and its cosmopolitan capital city only 130,000. The thing I remember most is the quality of the air. It was clean and clear in a way I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced before. Sometimes we don’t even know how heavy the air is until we breathe a different kind, Libra.

SCORPIO: Earlier this year, witches all over the world joined together to perform a binding spell on US President and professional horrorshow Donald J. Trump. The ritual could be the high-water line in the Magick Lady trope we’ve been seeing around for the past few years: an uptick in energy workers, crystals, occultist tattoos, power runes, and wide-brimmed hats. In 2017, it’s part fashion template, part feminist declaration, but the rise of witchery (especially to hamstring misogyny) could be a powerful path for you to follow as your children grow. Bind them to you in soft rituals of love and boundaries, and guard them fiercely against the things in the dark with teeth.

SAGITTARIUS: It took 31 years for the self-lacing shoe first seen in Back to the Future Part 2 to become a reality. The laces are powered by a pacemaker motor, and the fabric upper is woven out of pliable polyster. This is footwear for futurists, and yet, here they are. It makes me wonder if we’ve hit the rim of “the future” and are hurtling towards something stranger, more dangerous, and more brilliant than we can imagine. This is the future our kids are hurtling towards, too. We should ask ourselves: how do we prepare them for self-lacing shoes and beyond? What is our blueprint? Where is their Michael J. Fox movie?

CAPRICORN: If you had aced your math exams in high school, you might be an engineer today. If you had married your second boyfriend, you might be on your fourth kid by now. If you had taken a gap year, you might have ended up with white-girl dreads. It’s hard sometimes not to think about the unchosen path, but remember that there are a dozen branches leading off of today, too. An exercise program to start, a book to read, an appointment to make, an email to send. When you look back at this time in your life two decades from now, what will have propelled you forward? What will have held you back?

AQUARIUS: I didn’t get a full night’s sleep for six months after NS was born, and at nearly 14 months, I don’t think we’ve had a full week where he’s made it all the way through the night. This, so far, has been the biggest grind of early parenting. It’s not that the sleep is interrupted—although that is terrible, don’t get me wrong—but that the interruptions are endless and unpredictable. We usually understand one of the perks of adulthood to be setting our own schedules and minding our own clocks, but babies take that notion and throw it straight out the window. Anyway, this is my moment to say: solidarity with you, Aquarius, on the areas of adulthood where you’ve been sold a bill of goods. Maybe it’s work or sleep or your partner or something else, but the waking-up process is so draining.

PISCES: A few years ago, I realized that life was too short to consume media that I didn’t really enjoy. Gone, immediately, were the psychological thrillers and home invasion horror. I cut out unfunny sitcoms and crass animation. I stopped reading magazines that weren’t lovely, and gave myself permission to not finish books. From time to time, I miss out on conversations—bashing a particularly bad movie, or dissecting one that is capital-G great but punishing to sit through. For the most part, though, surrounding myself with media I enjoy, rather than images I feel like I ought to consume, has been nice. Life’s too short. Get a burrito and choose something you like.